Pictorial Palette: LES GIRLS (1957)

The Pictorial Palette is a weekly exercise that brings Technicolor glasses to design. By selecting a still from a classic film and exploring its color patterns, it is our hope that these little swaths of color will provide a needed burst of energy– perhaps even inspire a smidgen of creativity–to infuse and rejuvenate the weekly drudge.

Exceedingly fluffy, Les Girls is an infectious (if not shallow) musical brought to screen with due elegance by George Cukor. Taking it’s queue from, of all things, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (night/day anyone?) the film is all aglow with MGM luster. A dapper Gene Kelly and the divinely lovely Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall and Taina Elg dance and sing their way through a decent collection of Cole Porter tuners that make for pleasant enough escapism.

The film won an Oscar for Orry-Kelly’s decadent costume designs (ironically beating out the fashion industry farce Funny Face that same year) and we can’t really blame the Academy for their decision. Just look at it:

Related Articles

Need help deciding what to watch this week on Warner Archive Instant? The Retro Set has you covered with our must-watch Warner Archive picks! Each week, we select a small handful of must watch titles from […]

Share this:

Like this:

The Pictorial Palette is a regular exercise that brings Technicolor glasses to design. By selecting a still from a classic film and exploring its color patterns, it is our hope that these little swaths of […]

Get Social With Us!

In recent months, the Criterion Collection has released two films from the 1980s that are about the art of storytelling. The first, Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (1987), is a beloved Hollywood classic, based on [...]

[This review was begun the same day as the Oct. 27, 2018 Tree of Life shooting.] They killed eleven Jews in Pittsburgh today, gunned down in their synagogue as they prayed round their holy scriptures. [...]

Gloria Grahame may not seem to fit alongside the women we typically feature in this column — she didn’t found her own company, become a director, break any particular barriers, or do significant philanthropic work. [...]

Link TV, the national independent non-commercial satellite television network, is premiering a new weekly international film series this Thursday called CINEMONDO that brings cinema from around the world to foreign movie fans. Share this:TweetEmailMoreShare on TumblrLike [...]

The Bruno Walter Auditorium is home to the Silent Clowns Film Series, which boasts itself as “New York’s longest-running regularly scheduled silent film showcase.” For twenty years now, the series has provided the public with [...]

About Us

The Retro Set is dedicated to deeply personal, in-depth reflections of the films that define us. We believe that the moving image is one of the most powerful forms of artistic expression in existence and ours is an inexhaustible mission to better understand that art form through an open forum of candid conversation and observation.